Getting a console via USB to serial connector

Hi all,Has anyone attempted this before?I've got a laptop with no serial connector, so I bought a USB to serial converter. I pluged it into my laptop, it found it, and downloaded the drivers for it. I downloaded Hyperterm, and got it all configured. Everything looks good. I set the speed to 9600, 8N1.I pluged the other end of the serial cable into the back of an old HP box, but got no output at all.I've also tried connecting it to a sun box, but again no output. So then I tried to use linux and minicom as my method of getting a console, again no output.SO then I did all my testing again with another cable, in case the cable was broken, but again no output!!!!!!!

Has anyone else tried this and got it working. I know it should work, I've also tried using an HP terminal and that worked find, but I want to access the console via my laptop.

Re: Getting a console via USB to serial connector

Thanks both of you.I've check the com ports. Mine uses com5 from windows too, and when I use linux the device is /dev/ttyUSB0.

From a linux point of view, I'm using the pl2303 driver via the usbserial driver, this creates the /dev/ttyUSB0 device file, so I know that that the OS is seeing the cable and loads the driver, but minicom still says that connection is offline.

I seem to remember from many a long year ago, that I might have to tweek the modem codes from within minicom to get it to work, but I can't remember what to tweek. I've testing the console ports on the HP and sun box via a real console, and also a computer with a real serial output port, and this all works fine, so I must be missing somthing in the congiuration.